We’re filling up but a few seats remain for Monday’s Crucial Conversation luncheon:

Why unions are good for business and “right-to-work” laws aren’tFeaturing the Secretary Treasurer of the national AFL-CIO, Liz ShulerCo-sponsored by North Carolina AFL-CIO.

Liz Shuler was elected AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer in September 2009, the youngest person ever to become an officer of the AFL-CIO. Shuler previously was the highest-ranking woman in the Electrical Workers (IBEW) union, serving as the top assistant to the IBEW president since 2004. In 1993, she joined IBEW Local 125 in Portland, Ore., where she worked as an organizer and state legislative and political director. In 1998, she was part of the IBEW’s international staff in Washington, D.C., as a legislative and political representative.

Don’t miss this important opportunity to hear from this powerful and important voice for working families.

9 Comments

Frances Jenkins

March 2, 2013 at 8:19 am

Unions are bad for North Carolina. Detriot is being taken over by the state and much of the blame is at the feet of unions.

Alex

March 2, 2013 at 10:00 am

Unfortunately, unions are obsolete in a global economy where everything is tied to efficiency and cost. Their last refuge is public sector unions where they pander their votes for political concessions.

Alex

March 3, 2013 at 10:54 am

This was taken from CNN Business article where the defense department contracted for millions with a foreign company for the manufacture of Army weapons.

” There is a lesson to be learned for the unions, for the states and for our country of the ongoing challenge for businesses located in non-right-to-work states. If our own government is willing to give a defense contract to a foreign-owned entity over multiple, capable U.S.-owned entities – including one that incumbently held the previous contract – because of pricing, other entities will be focused on pricing too. States that continue to prioritize union ideology over the need to be competitive in a national and global marketplace may end up with no work at all.”

Jack

March 3, 2013 at 8:21 pm

If in deed “unions are obsolete” then it is because those perpetrating the economic war on the employee say so. Unions equal the voice of employees in the workplace. To say “unions are obsolete” is to say the people don’t matter in the workplace.

There is no evidence that the voice of the employee is irrelevant therefore obsolete. Only business will say that the voice of the employee is obsolete and yet turn around and accepts the employee’s manual and intellectual labor as valuable – but not to valuable in terms of a wage. Hence the fight by business to resist minimum wage; business wants the employee to be the working poor. “We will pay you X amount of dollars, just enough so you can house and feed yourself and very little more. Therefore, your focus will be on survival not living.”

Thousands of men and women have died to make it possible for employees to have a voice in the workplace. If we accept that “unions are obsolete” then we are saying the men and women died in vain and that the voice of the employee is of no value.

Alex

March 4, 2013 at 8:03 am

You are making an emotional argument for unions Jack, but bottomline the global economy forces a company to be lean, efficient , and cost competitive just to survive. The union shops struggle with all three factors, as evidenced by the auto bailouts and the steel industry. Times have simply changed, and unfortunately most unions are simply trying to do things the old way.

Jack

March 4, 2013 at 9:36 am

Rather than being lean and mean in the global economy U.S. business failed to perform in the market place against competitors. That business and Wall Street accepted our tax dollars to save them from failure gives labor, the people, the right to be at the table since it is our money on the line. Business would ask for nothing less if the tables were turned and neither should labor.

That is not an emotional argument it is a business approach to doing business.

Buy the way, from the first effort of a business to expand its market there has been a global market. Columbus was sent by the ruling power of Spain to expand the market and territory of Spain. That effort alone created the global economy.

Jack

March 4, 2013 at 2:05 pm

The Crucial Conversation luncheon with Liz Shuler as great. She spoke well of the issue facing the American worker and specifically workers in NC. The working poor need a voice at the table of business as does any person employed.

Wages have been on the decline since the early ’70s. Your pay, hours and workplace conditions can always improve.

Take a look at the Raleigh Lions Clinic if you want to see sweatshop conditions and how business is making a profit on the back of a labor force made up of people with disabilities.

Frances Jenkins

March 5, 2013 at 5:59 am

Tell us more about the Raleigh Lions Clinic. If this true, they need to sit on a burnt stump in hell.

Alex

March 5, 2013 at 2:19 pm

Liz Shuler will say anything as long as she can stay on the union dole.